Correspondent Blog

Oil prices tumbled this morning after President Trump said the U.S. and Iran had productive talks, leading him to order a halt on strikes against key energy infrastructure in the country. West Texas Intermediate futureswere down 7% at $91 per barrel. Brent crude lost around 8% as well to trade at $104. Risk-on is the…

Uncertainty created by the war in Iran continues to swirl, and the Fed has decided that it’s best to sit on the sidelines until more is known about the economic impact, and that has investors revisiting their expectations for monetary policy this year. The immediate result of the uncertainty is to price out any rate…

Meeting Highlights As widely anticipated, the Fed left the funds rate unchanged at its target rate range of 3.50% – 3.75%.  The biggest uncertainty heading into the meeting was the updated rate forecast, or dot plot, along with changes to the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). In December, they had the funds rate dropping to…

It’s Wednesday, so that means FOMC Decision Day. While everyone, including us, expect the Fed to pause there’s still plenty to learn from today’s meeting that we delve into below. Also, another piece of the inflation puzzle was revealed today as the February PPI report was released and that means more pieces to fit into…

With the Iran war looming over all aspects of trading, we finish the week with an important, albeit dated, report in the form of January Personal Income and Spending. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure is the headline feature of the report, but the personal spending numbers will get a once over too given the softening…

With the Iran war looming over all aspects of trading, we finish the week with an important, albeit dated, report in the form of January Personal Income and Spending. The Fed’s preferred inflation measure is the headline feature of the report, but the personal spending numbers will get a once over too given the softening…

Treasuries have been taking their lead from oil markets this week and yesterday that led to a dizzying roundtrip between losses and gains as news of a US warship successfully escorting a tanker through the Straits of Hormuz brought a relief rally and drop in oil prices.  Then that news was taken down and replaced…

Friday’s big miss on jobs and lackluster January retail sales didn’t provide the spark for a Treasury rally as investors took the confusing jobs report and decided to worry more about inflation risk from the Iran war that weekend events showed is not going away anytime soon. Oil surging 70% in one week will do…

February nonfarm payrolls fell 92 thousand, missing by a wide margin the 55 thousand expected and 126 thousand gained in January (revised lower from an initial 130 thousand).   Two-month revisions cut 69 thousand jobs from previous estimates with December revised 65 thousand lower and January 4 thousand lower. Given the level of disparity between…

With the war moving into Day 5, and financial markets finally taking notice, we find ourselves with another round of February employment numbers before the big BLS report on Friday.  As for today, we have some privately sourced labor market data with the ADP Employment Change Report and a little later the ISM Services Index…

We enter what is typically the busiest week of any month as far as first-tier economic data is concerned, headlined by the jobs report on Friday, but this week the economic data will spar with geo-political developments for investor attention. The weekend war news creates additional issues and uncertainties that the market must react to…

Questions continue to swirl regarding the ultimate impact of AI on the economy, and that has kept equities from breaking to new highs. Another blowout earnings report from Nvidia wasn’t enough to rekindle animal spirits. Those risk asset struggles continue to aid Treasuries and with geo-political risk looming, there are more Treasury bids waiting in…